Eve's Dreams
by Kryss LaBryn
Summary: PostGN. A wistful journey in which Eve comes to terms with V's death and his intended role for her. Told as a series of dream vignettes. COMPLETE! Please, if you read, review!
1. Eve's Dream

**Eve's Dreams**

_by Kryss Labryn_

_...Who owns nothing and no one. If I did, I'd have more money and instead of goofing off work to write fanfic I'd just write it openly._

_ Please please please, if I move you at all, take teh time to tell me so. You do NOT have to have an account here to submit a review!_

_Enjoy!_

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This is Eve's dream.

It is always different. It is always the same.

This time it is a beach, its wildness made lonelier by the cries of the seabirds; by the faint piping of the sandpipers as they dart along the shore, by the mournful calling of the seagulls overhead. But the sun is shining; the breeze is warm as it plays with V's hair as she had never done.

"Where are we?" she asks, as he reaches his hand to her, and, "Does it matter?" he asks as she takes it.

It doesn't, she decides as she falls into step beside him, and she says nothing. They stroll along in companionable silence.

This is V and Eve, walking in the sand.

They near the shore; Eve kicks off her sandals and raises her skirt to wade in the blood-warm water. V follows her. "Your boots," she says to him; "They'll be ruined."

"What boots?" asks V, and Eve realizes that his clothes _are_ his skin, after all. His boots _are_ his feet. His gloves _are_ his hands.

This is V, with skin of silk and leather, naked before Eve.

For what is skin, after all, but the outermost layer of ourselves? muses Eve. She sheds that which is no part of her.

This is Eve, naked before V.

The sand is warm and soft, as yielding as a bed as V lays her back on it. She pulls his head to hers, and his lips against her are not porcelain, as she had always thought; they are the warm loving lips of a living man. His moustache tickles her slightly as his lips leave hers to make their careful way along her jaw to the sensitive spot just beneath her ear.

She opens to him; he enters her, silk and leather and steel as the rest of him; he moves within her as she tilts to pull him deeper, her legs entwined about him urging him on, her arms clasping him tightly to her lest she lose him. Again.

This is V and Evey, loving.

She looks up to his face, and knows that his smile has meaning; that his smile that matches her own is as much a smile of joy, of love, of ecstasy as her own. That he doesn't _have_ to smile at all.

And as waves of pleasure begin to rush through her, echoing the warm waters rising about them, she holds him as tightly to her, within her, as she can, desperately seeking one more glimpse of him, one more touch of him, to catch his scent one more time. But as the darkness descends, as it always does, she knows that one more time, she has failed.

And Eve, waking, as she always does, alone in her apartment as she always is, buries her face in the pillow that does not smell of V at all, and cries hot bitter tears in the night.

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_A/N: More to come!_


	2. Eve's Second Dream

_A/N: Here you go: the second chapter of seven. Just a reminder, if you finish this chapter feeling anything at all but "meh", if you love it, if you hated it, then please please take the time to send a review. Don't make me beg. 'Cause I will. Reviews are the only coin we're paid, here..._

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Eve's Second Dream:

In Eve's second dream, there is no Shadow Gallery. There is no V. The resettlement camp that spawned him was never destroyed, because it never existed. The government that spawned it was never called into being. The war that gave rise to the chaos that gave birth to Norsefire never happened. Her father was never blackbagged. Her mother never died of the sickness that followed the war. She was never orphaned. Everything happened as it should have.

Sometimes, in this dream, she is a young girl still in high school. She wears her hair loose so she can toss it at boys, and giggles behind her hands with her friends when they look.

Sometimes she has a boyfriend. Once, they were married. Her mother bounced her laughing grandchildren on her knee. Her father tossed them high into the air.

One time, she went to Oxford. She majored in theatre. She became an assistant with a very popular television program. Her parents watched every episode, just to see her name in the credits. One time, she had a small walk-on. They were thrilled.

Sometimes, though, there is no Shadow Gallery because there is no V. The resettlement camp that birthed him was never destroyed, because V never survived. And without V, there was no one to save her, the night she propositioned a Fingerman.

"It's a Class H offence," and the bastard smiles, his eyes lighting up like a kid at Christmas; "That means we get to decide what your punishment is. It's our prerogative."

"It's my first offence; please! I'll do anything you ask. Please don't kill me," she whispers, hopeless.

"You have it all wrong," he laughs as they close in on her; "You'll do anything we want, and _then_ we'll kill you.

"It's our prerogative."

There is no V. Everything happens as it should have.

In the depths of the night, alone and shivering, Eve has never been sure which version is worse.


	3. Eve's Third Dream

Eve's Third Dream: 

Eve's third dream is a confused jumble of images, shapes and sounds intermingling, with random bursts of meaning, like a television flipped too quickly through too many channels. In the morning she remembers little of it; all she can recall is bits and pieces, like a montage of lives pasted together from snippets on a cutting room floor.

She works in retail. She's very busy.

She stays at home to raise her child.

She helps police trap pedophiles.

She raises roses in Australia.

She watches V run across a college campus…

In the morning she has a headache. She is short-tempered throughout the day, distracted by a lingering feeling that she isn't quite Eve Hammond anymore.

That night she takes a sleeping pill. There is no fourth dream. She wakes in the morning feeling rested and refreshed.

She can't understand why it feels like a loss.

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_A/N: More to come! __ And as always, please, read and review! 'Cause not one person has bothered to, yet... :-(  
_


	4. Eve's Fifth Dream

_A/N: As mentioned at the end of Eve's Third Dream, there is no Fourth Dream. We go directly to the Fifth. Dream Number Five..._

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Eve's Fifth Dream: 

Eve dreams of V.

V. Five. November the Fifth and Beethoven's Fifth and the Morse code for "v".

She dreams victories. She dreams vendettas.

She dreams fireworks and music in the night. Tchaikovsky. Cannons.

She dreams eggs frying in real butter and a ridiculous flowered apron.

She dreams parries, a lunge with perfect extension.

She dreams a madman's giggle.

She dreams a parting sigh.

Surrounded by his recovered treasures, caressed by forbidden tunes, utterly at home in an outfit that would have been laughable if he were less graceful, less immaculate, less polite, less deadly.

Eve dreams V.

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_A/N: More to come! Please, read and review!_


	5. Eve's Sixth Dream

Eve's Sixth Dream:

Eve smells V before she sees him. Leather and spices and underneath it his own clean scent. She's standing on top of the highest mountain in the world. She can see everything, all spread out below her. Like an eagle, she can focus her gaze, see in the minutest detail. Nothing is hidden from her.

Except V.

She knows that he is standing right behind her. The wind, whipping her hair about, carries his scent past her. She can just feel the warmth from his body; just feel the shelter he gives from the crisp air. But he says nothing.

_Does he know I know he's there?_ she wonders. She is afraid to turn around. Afraid that he doesn't _want_ her to know of his presence. Afraid that, if she turns to face him, he'll have gone again.

She wants to lean back against him, to feel the warmth and security of his arms about her, but she's afraid that if she does, she'll simply lean back into nothing and tumble down forever and ever and ever…

If she listens, she can almost hear him breathing.

"I miss you, V," she dares to whisper to the wind, not daring to wipe the frozen tears from her face lest he vanish, and, _I know, my love, _doesn't quite drift back on the wind to her.

Any moment. At any moment she'll turn, and take him into her arms, and tell him how much she loves him, and never let him go.

At any moment she'll feel his arms close around her, feel him pressed warm against her back, feel his breath against her face as he holds her close.

_Any moment._

_Any moment now._

Eve stands on the mountaintop, arms crossed against the chill, waiting, alone in the snow.

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_A/N: More to come! Please, read and review!_


	6. Eve's Seventh Dream

Eve's Seventh Dream

"Why are you _doing_ this to me?" she rants, pacing and shouting. He stands beside the jukebox, as annoyingly imperturbable as always. Part of her wants to kiss him. Part of her wants to hit him.

The hitting part's winning.

"Why are you _haunting_ me like this? Why can't you just leave me alone?"

"Because you still need me," he replies calmly. _Why else_, says his stance.

"But you _left_ me, V! You left me here alone! Do you know what I've _been_ through? How could you _do_ that to me?" She raises a hand to strike him, but his own gloved hand intercepts hers. He squeezes once, gently. Reassuringly.

"My story _had_ to end the way it did; you know that," he chides her gently, still holding her wrist. "_I_ had to end. 'Away with our unlovely bastards!'" He pauses, then adds, "You never did drink a toast to me, Eve."

"Drink a— V, you _died!_ You died and left me with nothing but chaos!"

"No," he corrects, releasing her, "I left you with a canvas. I destroyed so that you could create…" He steps back.

"Create _what_, V? What am I supposed to create?"  
"Create _anything_, Eve. I gave you the power. Eve. Nurturer. First mother of a new world…"

He has almost vanished into the shadows. "Create a new Eden, Eve. Birth a new world."

"V!" Eve runs after him, but there's nothing there but shadows, nothing _anywhere_ but shadows, with only Eve, running and lost and desperate within. "V! You have to help me! I'm not strong enough for that! Come back, V! _Please!_"

"You _are_ strong enough," a whisper drifts by. "I _made_ you strong enough. Go forth and create, beloved."

The impenetrable shadows lighten, slightly, as Eve calls, "If I am Eve, then who does that make _you_..?"

"Who made who, Eve? Who made you?"

"You did…"

"And I am here with you now. Go forth and create, Eve…"

The shadows lighten further into the familiar contours of her bedroom. _Go forth and create. I am with you._

Absurdly, Eve is comforted.

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_A/N:_

_'Away with our unlovely bastards!'—From the Graphic Novel (page 222): "Away with our destroyers! They have no place within our better world. But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable. Let's drink their health… Then meet with them no more."_

_"Who made who?" is from the song of the same name by AC/DC._

_Please, if you read this, send me a review!_


	7. Eve's Final Dream

Eve's Final Dream

Eve is atop a building, warm in the lowering sun. Across the glittering Thames, construction continues on the new Parliament buildings. The restoration of the Old Bailey is almost complete.

Beside her stands a striking young woman, golden waves of hair stirring slightly in the evening breeze. She stands poised, erect, relaxed. Her patrician profile gazes across the city. She wears loose, flowing, almost classical clothing. "Who are you?" Eve asks.

The young woman turns. "Mother, it's me: London," she smiles.

"Ah, yes," says Eve to her daughter, wondering faintly why she had forgotten. She looks down to the child sleeping in her lap, delicate eyelashes resting on soft baby cheeks around small pursing lips, full of possibilities as all children are. "Dear England", she murmurs, brushing back a stray lock with a grandmother's gentle hands. "I wish your father could have been here," she adds, looking back up at London.

London gazes out across herself, listening, perhaps, to the voices in the street below. Ordinary voices, in ordinary conversation. Not carefree; the world will always have cares, realized Eve, but not hushed in fear, either. The setting sun sent no one scurrying home for fear of curfew, of Fingermen, of injustice… "It's what he wanted, Mother," says London, almost absently.

And it is, thinks Eve. She gazes out at the city reborn, vital, alive, beautiful in the golden light washing across it. It is exactly what V wanted.

Possibilities. One step at a time, first London, then England, and then, who knew..?

She could do it. One step at a time. She was Eve.

And Eve, asleep in the first rays of the rising sun, smiles, at peace.

_Finis_


End file.
